“Ah!  You got to know that so soon,” muttered Razumov negligently.

“Yes.  We did.  And it struck us that a man like you...”

“What sort of a man do you take me to be?” Razumov interrupted him.

“A man of ideas—­and a man of action too.  But you are very deep, Kirylo.  There’s no getting to the bottom of your mind.  Not for fellows like me.  But we all agreed that you must be preserved for our country.  Of that we have no doubt whatever—­I mean all of us who have heard Haldin speak of you on certain occasions.  A man doesn’t get the police ransacking his rooms without there being some devilry hanging over his head....  And so if you think that it would be better for you to bolt at once....”

Razumov tore himself away and walked down the corridor, leaving the other motionless with his mouth open.  But almost at once he returned and stood before the amazed Kostia, who shut his mouth slowly.  Razumov looked him straight in the eyes, before saying with marked deliberation and separating his words—­

“I thank—­you—­very—­much.”

He went away again rapidly.  Kostia, recovering from his surprise at these manoeuvres, ran up behind him pressingly.

“No!  Wait!  Listen.  I really mean it.  It would be like giving your compassion to a starving fellow.  Do you hear, Kirylo?  And any disguise you may think of, that too I could procure from a costumier, a Jew I know.  Let a fool be made serviceable according to his folly.  Perhaps also a false beard or something of that kind may be needed.

“Razumov turned at bay.

“There are no false beards needed in this business, Kostia—­you good-hearted lunatic, you.  What do you know of my ideas?  My ideas may be poison to you.”  The other began to shake his head in energetic protest.

“What have you got to do with ideas?  Some of them would make an end of your dad’s money-bags.  Leave off meddling with what you don’t understand.  Go back to your trotting horses and your girls, and then you’ll be sure at least of doing no harm to anybody, and hardly any to yourself.”

The enthusiastic youth was overcome by this disdain.

“You’re sending me back to my pig’s trough, Kirylo.  That settles it.  I am an unlucky beast—­and I shall die like a beast too.  But mind—­it’s your contempt that has done for me.”

Razumov went off with long strides.  That this simple and grossly festive soul should have fallen too under the revolutionary curse affected him as an ominous symptom of the time.  He reproached himself for feeling troubled.  Personally he ought to have felt reassured.  There was an obvious advantage in this conspiracy of mistaken judgment taking him for what he was not.  But was it not strange?

Again he experienced that sensation of his conduct being taken out of his hands by Haldin’s revolutionary tyranny.  His solitary and laborious existence had been destroyed—­the only thing he could call his own on this earth.  By what right? he asked himself furiously.  In what name?